Merging legality with illegality in Paraguay: the cluster of order in Pedro Juan Caballero

Paraguay is often described as a territory of drug trafficking, smuggling and commercial piracy. However, the country remains understudied by academics researching criminality and illegal markets. Pedro Juan Caballero, a city located on the northern border with Brazil, is an interesting case study to illustrate how legality and illegality merge in Paraguay to create hybrid social orders. The daily life in the city, one of the best places in the world for cultivating marijuana, unfolds between the higher homicides rates and some of the lowest levels of common criminality in Paraguay. Far from being a matter of state weakness, the expansion and tolerance of illegal activities is framed within a cluster of order that combines both rational legal practices and neo-­patrimonial norms. The presence and roles of state institutions are re-signified, generating alternative hierarchies, practices and values to supply social, political and economic outcomes. Through in-depth interviews with key informants, ethnography visits and analyses of aggregated data, this paper describes the hybrid order of Pedro Juan Caballero by tallying the incentives that encourage social and institutional tolerance of illegality and describes how illegal practices create access to goods, services, protection and expectations not provided by the legal framework.     

Relationship Between Intimate Partner Violence, Depressive Symptomatology, and Personality Traits

The aim of this study was to examine the relationship between intimate partner violence (IPV) and personality disorder symptoms controlling for depressive state. Victims of IPV (n?=?176) and non-abused women (n?=?193) completed the Dimensional Assessment of Personality Pathology-Basic Questionnaire (DAPP-BQ), Index of Spouse Abuse (ISA), and Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II). IPV victims scored higher than non-abused women on Intimacy Problems, and scored lower on Rejection traits, after adjustment for depressive symptoms. Severity of the IPV was related to Cognitive Distortion, Suspiciousness, Restricted Expression, and Intimacy Problems, and the length of the IPV was negatively associated with Rejection. The current study suggests only modest differences in personality traits between IPV and non-abused women. The DAPP-BQ traits associated with severity of IPV, in a dose-response manner, would partially reflect the symptoms of complex post-traumatic stress disorder (CPTSD), although this possibility deserves further study.     

Cyberbullying in Portuguese Schools: Prevalence and Characteristics

This study examined the extent and nature of cyberbullying in 23 Portuguese schools. A sample of 3,525 sixth-, eighth-, and eleventh-grade students completed a self-response questionnaire assessing their perceptions and experiences of cyberbullying. The findings showed that 7.6% of students have been victimized, and 3.9% have bullied others at least once over the last year. The incidences of victimization were higher for females and for the older students. In contrast, more boys reported having bullied others in the eleventh grade. The most frequent medium of cyberbullying was via websites, whilst sending offensive messages was the most widely reported type of behavior. Telling someone about cyberbullying is among the most frequent coping strategies used by cybervictims, who usually chose to tell their friends rather than adults. Implications of these findings for students, schools, and parents are discussed.     

Potentially Lethal Behaviors Associated With Rapid Eye Movement Sleep Behavior Disorder: Review of the Literature and Forensic Implications

Abstract:  Rapid eye movement (REM) sleep behavior disorder (RBD) is characterized by loss of the muscle atonia of REM sleep, with release of complex and violent behaviors that are often attempted dream-enactments. This study reviewed the literature on RBD with regard to potentially lethal behavior. A total of 39–41 clinical cases of RBD associated with potentially lethal behaviors to self and/or others were found, involving a child and adults of all age groups, that manifested as choking/headlock ( n  = 22–24), defenestration/near-defenestration ( n  = 7), and diving from bed ( n  = 10). A total of 80.8% ( n  = 21) were males; 19.2% ( n  = 5) were females; mean age was 65.6 ± (SD) 13.8 years (range: 27–81 years, and a child). (Gender/age data were not listed in the remaining cases.) An etiologic association of RBD with a neurologic disorder (or with pharmacotherapy of psychiatric disorders, n  = 4) was present in 21–23 patients. Thus, RBD carries well-documented, potential forensic consequences during RBD episodes that could possibly have been misinterpreted as suicidal or homicidal behavior.     

The Organization of the Executive Branch in Latin America: What We Know and What We Need to Know

This article proposes a research agenda for the organization of the executive branch in Latin America by reviewing the literature on the U.S. and Latin American presidencies and outlining the research gap between them. The study finds that while strong, regionwide patterns have been established about cabinets in Latin America, research is lagging behind on the presidential center, presidential advisory networks, and their effects in policymaking. The article sets forth a series of research questions and suggests a combination of quantitative, social network, and case study strategies to address them.     

Explaining fear of crime in Queensland

A model to explain fear of crime in Queensland is developed and fitted to data from the 1991 Queensland Crime Victims Survey. Fear of crime is measured from the answers to the question about respondents' feelings of safety when walking alone in their area after dark. The results suggest that factors such as gender, age, poverty, educational level, labor force status, level of incivility in the area, perceived amount of crime in the area, and neighborhood cohesion all make an impact on fear of crime in a way that is consistent with the theory. The results also show that fear of crimein Queensland is explained by very concrete factors that can be subject to intervention and policy formulation by relevant bodies.The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Government Statistician's Office or the Queensland Government.     

Political liberalization in the People's Republic of China: Its linkage to the Mainland-Taiwan reunification

This article examines the impact of China's liberal political reforms on its reunification with Taiwan from the perspective of linkage theory. Through the liberalization of domestic politics, the post-Mao leadership has effected a fundamental change of regime type, transforming the Maoist totalitarian state to an established single-party regime. Because of this change, the Chinese Communists have increasingly considered China more as a developing country than a Marxist regime that needs a favorable regional and international environment for implementing its modernization programs. This has led to the emergence of a secular and stable China. The liberal tendencies in internal politics have produced four domestic-international linkages favoring China in the settlement of the Taiwan issues. Despite the presence of some negative linkages against China, it seems that the post-Deng leadership can take charge of the reunification issues as long as they can continue to make progress in institutionalizing its political system and in liberalizing its monolithic institutions.     

Governance and Incentive Regulation in Defence Industry Enterprises: A Case Study

In this paper, we analyse the relative efficiency of the Portuguese defence industry with a stochastic frontier. In so doing we consider whether government subsidies have, in fact, resulted in an increase in the technical efficiency of the Portuguese defence-sector companies and whether there is a governance environment to enforce the desired improvement in efficiency. We find that the results are, at best, mixed, leading us to conclude that the incentive regulation introduced by the Ministry of Defence is not achieving its aims. Moreover, governance issues are not on the government agenda. Therefore, we propose a policy revision to enforce efficiency, based on a governance environment framework.JEL M14, D72, K22, K33